Marginal Figures in the Global Middle Ages and the Renaissance
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Book Series
Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, vol. 26
The Hospital of Incurable Madness
L’Hospedale de’ Pazzi Incurabili (1586), by Tomaso Garzoni
Daniela Pastina, John W. Crayton (eds)
- Pages: 251 p.
- Size:175 x 255 mm
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2010
- € 45,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-52895-3
- Hardback
- Available
Summary
This translation of Tomaso Garzoni’s Renaissance
“best-seller” provides a rich and revealing window on
sixteenth-century views of madness and foolishness, and social
deviance. Garzoni’s encyclopedic work is perhaps the most
important contribution of the last half of the century to the
“fools” genre to which Erasmus’ Praise of
Folly and Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools also
belong. Garzoni provides a spoof of academic writing on madness,
with extensive “reviews of the medical literature” on
certain types of madness. A final, intriguing section on the
varieties of madness to be found in Garzoni’s female
“patients” reveals much about late-Renaissance
attitudes towards women.